Zeopane needs your help

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are in a critical phase in Zeopane. We have made a lot of significant progress in the last few weeks. Based on feedback from a couple of VCs we approached and some honest introspection, we strongly believe that we are now at a stage where we need some specific and relevant skills on the management team and/or the board of advisors. So I'll provide a brief recap on the company, our technology and our current status and the kind of people we are looking for.

If you can help us out by spreading the word among your friends in the industry (irrespective of where they are located) and to well-connected friends who might know others, I'd really appreciate it. Of course, any contact that comes through you, we'll ensure that when we go to the next level, your assistance will be suitably rewarded. This will be over and above the satisfaction you will get from helping a pain-free drug-delivery technology reach the market and help save millions of lives.

Zeopane is an early-stage medical device start-up based in Hong Kong that has access to a unique and innovative nano-scale drug-delivery technology called Zeolite microneedles. Microneedles is the next-generation of innovative transdermal drug-delivery technologies and is being pursued by big names of the likes of 3M, J&J, BD among others. We have done thorough research on the competition and have strong reasons to believe our technology is superior in terms of costs and in terms of features.

We have already prototyped the technology, patented it (US and PCT patents filed and approved) and validated the technology in in-vitro trials. We are now moving into in-vivo trials in collaboration with some partners with a lot of experience in medical device commercialization and are looking to raise capital for the same. We plan to be ready to move into the first phase of human trials if all goes smoothly by mid next year. In order to strengthen the management team and the advisory board, we are looking for

1. Management Partner: Strong background in pharmaceuticals or medical devices (preferably in a start-up) in a middle to senior management position with relevant experience in commercialization of medical devices, business development or clinical research / validations and regulatory affairs in medical devices. The person should be either willing to move to Hong Kong / Australia (that's where one of our partners is) or India (that's where another potential partner of ours is) and / or travel frequently between two of these three places.


2. Advisory Board Member: For a person with the above skills and experience, but is not up for a management team position (right away due to current job commitments or not at all), we are also open to looking at getting them on our Board of Advisors (in which case they'll need to participate in occasional meetings and be available to guide us to move forward with our commercialization steps) in exchange for being a part of our growth story.


3. Biochemical Engineer: A bio-chemical engineer who has experience in the manufacturing space or the capability to work with the scientists in understanding our critical IP around nano-technology based drug-delivery and preferably zeolite based micro-structures and helping us setup the processes and infrastructure to begin manufacturing micro-needles. If you know someone who you think might fit the bill but is not willing to commit to this right away, do put me in touch with them so that we can work out an arrangement that will be beneficial to them and the company (an advisory role for now and a position in the management team once we make more progress for example).

Please share this post with friends, relatives and acquaintances by e-mail and through social networking sites that you are a part off, send out a tweet on twitter with this post or blog's address and do whatever else is possible to get the word around and eventually reach people who might be able to help me out. I may be sounding desperate. But this is a very crucial time for this company and technology and that's the reason I am trying to push forward with this.

Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide. You can contact me or have them contact me at arhebbar (at) gmail.com in case of any interest / need clarifications.